Presently, prescriptions are generally processed at retail pharmacies without the assistance of significant amounts of automation and are mostly done manually by the pharmacist. Prescription orders at present are commonly entered into computer systems which do a variety of work flow tasks, such as checking patient profiles and printing of prescription labels, as well as doing the order entry or the payment aspect of the prescription filled. Prescriptions are typically filled by hand with just a few persons, being the pharmacist, technician, clerk, and cashier accomplishing all tasks from order entry to payment.
The drawback of the present retail pharmacy system is that most retail pharmacies use little or no dispensing automation equipment, and they do not use computer components for displaying images of the prescription and the drug for quality control, but instead rely on manpower to process the required workload from start to finish of a patient's medical prescription fulfillment.